AAR62 - Homeownership Progress Update

0:00I can't believe it's actually been a year since we, my wife and I, first purchased this home, but somehow it has been. And I want to take this opportunity to give you all an update on how it's gone, what's been good and bad, and what's been expected and surprising. And as always, trying to be as honest and transparent as humanly possible. So I really hope that that comes across and it can do some good, whether you're thinking of buying a home sometime in the future or if you're in the process right now, even, which I hope it's going well for you. or third off, you already have a home and have for a while.

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3:01Good day, everyone, and welcome back to At Any Rate. My name is Evan Ray, and we are here to help you make sustainable financial changes without breaking a sweat. This is going to be another one of those episodes where it's going to be, I am here to help you make sustainable financial changes, because today is going to be a solo episode, and today is going to be an update on our home ownership progress. So just for those of you that aren't aware, we purchased a home back. It was like mid-August of 2025, so it's been close to a year now, and I want to give an update on how that progress has gone.

3:33if you haven't heard the first episode where I dive deep into the entire home buying process then you can look up AAR 17 it was the 17th episode where I cover that and that covers everything from the apartment that we were living in before you know what our situation living and financially was prior to buying a home what the process of looking into buying a home was the actual buying process and then some mistakes that we felt like we made along the way or things we could have improved on through the home buying process So there's a lot to learn that episode. And just as a quick synopsis, we are first time homeowners at 27 years old, which is it's it's kind of surreal.

4:11It feels fantastic. I feel very, very privileged and proud to have reached that point. And it's it was and still is extremely scary at times, but it is truly amazing. And it feels like an absolute gift. And even though it is a gift, we did definitely work hard to achieve that. It has to be a mix of luck and work all the time. and there was a lot of luck but there was also a lot of work that went into it and truly we used everything that we talk about in this podcast the content that we generate on here is all what we used to achieve that it's none of it none of what we talk about here on here is just bs or useless stuff or just here to to you know here to move our lips and just and just put words out into the universe everything we talk about on here is genuinely meant to help people and it is things that we have used to help ourselves and make significant, genuine changes for our financial lives.

5:05And, and I hope that that, that, that, you know, comes across that, that I mean that from the heart and, and we are just living examples of the, of the kind of changes that this can make. I mean, I can guarantee you right now that if we hadn't started our financial journey when we did and in the way that we did and had our financial awakening and made the changes that we made and made the progress that we made and followed the decisions that we made, we would not have been here in nearly the same kind of timeline or been able to make the same kind of positive changes for our lives. Owning a home has been truly amazing for us.

5:42And those of you who do own a home probably know the feeling of having your own space, just being in your own place that you have some kind of ownership of, some kind of control over is truly a gift and it feels absolutely amazing. so yeah today I want to look back on how we felt about the home and decisions that we made and most importantly of course since at the end of the day this is a financial podcast how the finances have worked out I said finance is kind of weird there but you'll forgive me as well as I want to cover how accurate our upfront estimations were not necessarily number for number because you know there's so many fluctuations on things I couldn't dial it down to a single dollar but But I'll cover some of the things that we did and didn't estimate accurately and did and didn't line up with what we tried to estimate ahead of time.

6:27So to start off with just the experience of the home itself. So the home itself, the location has been pretty dang solid. I think I've mentioned this in previous podcasts that the area in the city that we currently live in isn't where we want to live for the rest of our lives. That's certainly not the goal. However, this is currently where our jobs are and it is currently a solid area to live. There's nothing, you know, horribly wrong about it or anything. And so it's still a fine place to live. And the location of the home itself in that area is fantastic. We're very happy. We love that the neighborhood that we're in is far enough removed to have, you know, a bunch of nature around it, but still be only, you know, five minutes away from anywhere.

7:09Most places that we would want to go, you know, like grocery shopping, restaurants and everything. And each of us are only about 10 minutes away from work. so we have a really good mix of being in a really beautiful neighborhood with a lot of beautiful houses far more expensive than this house which is it's fantastic to have access to just see those kinds of places and have the kind of neighborhood that comes along with those places but while still being close enough to everything else to have good access so absolutely love that as well as the size of the home how we felt about the size I think we got just the right size we ended up getting a 4 '2 it's about 1850 square feet and for us it's been it's been fantastic we have probably you know just enough room not squeezing by any means but like just enough room where we can stretch out and have room to do things and have room to you know have people over and have dedicated areas for things instead of living in the apartment that we lived in before you know everything is a shared space there's a million things happening in every single area and now having a home we feel like we can actually stretch out and of course having a garage where things can go to die although we're trying very hard not to not to do that and not squeeze everything into our garage.

8:16But having that kind of size and room has been fantastic. And I think it's been just about perfect. And speaking of space, like I mentioned, having our own space has been an absolute, an absolute life changer for, for us, you know, something like watching a movie loud or blasting music or not worrying about how you walk. Cause we, we always lived on the, on the second floor. And so we didn't want to be those kinds of people that ruined the lives of the people below us. and as all apartments are in this area they're all stick built they're all just you know wood stick built and so sound travels very very easily including footsteps and so you we had to walk quite carefully to not you know just be a constant nuisance to the people below us and we were we were careful of that but that also means you're constantly thinking about it worrying about it and just having our own space it sounds so silly but the the immediate change of being able to walk and the way that we wanted to walk was massive for us.

9:10And I know that that might sound incredibly small to many people out there. Or even if you used to live in apartments that were concrete block built or something like that, that were more solid, it might sound silly, but these stick-built apartments, they transfer every single noise. You can hear sneezes, you can hear talking, you can hear walking, you can hear everything. And having that change has been fantastic. Of course, all the lifestyle privileges that go along with having a home and having your own space and having your own yard to do things and having your own driveway, not having to park, you know, somewhere else and always walk in, or if it's raining, being able to park in the garage, all those little lifestyle improvements have been massive for us.

9:47And I know that, of course, on a financial podcast, the big focus is money. But as we talked about before, what the heck is the point of money if you're not living with your money, if you're not enjoying life with or because of or partially because of the wealth and the money that you've gained. All these little lifestyle things I'm talking about and these little pieces of enjoyment are the reason that you earn money. And for us, this is kind of an accumulation of one of our whys of to earn money. Why save money? Why try and build wealth? One of those things is being able to have a home and have our own space, being able to walk how we want to walk in our home and not bug anybody else and not worry about it.

10:28Those little things are the reason that you save up money. and if you think it's not I would strongly challenge you to think about it a little bit harder because I guarantee you that there is not a single person out there that doesn't have reasons behind wanting to accumulate more money a big enough a bigger number in your bank account is not enough for you it's not enough for a single human being out there and these are just little silly examples that all add up to a meaningful reason behind why we want to earn more money now to cover kind of things that we've that we've done to the home since we purchased it we have we haven't done a lot we haven't you know blown a ton of money on the home or anything little things we've done we did screen in the back lanai um we we did put in a little garden outbacks a couple raised beds uh which has been fun although definitely challenging at times as anybody who's gardened will know um there's been ups and downs but there's been ups and that feels good anyways a ton of furniture of course furniture is a massive thing we were moving from an apartment and moving to a home not only having to purchase a ton of new a new stuff but also wanting to get good quality stuff.

11:28Now that we have our own home in our own space, we've had a big focus of wanting to buy things that will last and we will be confident that we will enjoy using for a long time instead of just getting things that, you know, or whatever is most affordable. So furniture has not been cheap. And that also means we haven't been able to just shove the home full of furniture in every single place we would want to, because we have to save up to make that happen. Also find the right pieces for it. We've also done a little bit of painting. We haven't repainted the whole house but we did painting in the in the laundry room and the bathrooms for moisture that sort of stuff so kind of just painting in areas that we needed to uh we'll definitely do more painting over time but that's initially what we've done we also got the garage floor epoxied which has been fantastic would strongly recommend if you're if your garage floor is just a concrete block a big big lifestyle improvement and uh so much easier to clean so much easier to maintain I mean, just fantastic to get the garage floor epoxied.

12:22Also, installing a car charger, I could talk about that forever. It's been a huge upside. And I know many of you may know that I have a Tesla. I have an EV. And being able to charge at home, I mean, that is, it's the easiest thing in the world that you could possibly imagine. Get home from work. Doesn't matter if I'm at 1%, plug it in by the morning. Or even if I get home late at night, 0%, 1%, plug it in. By the morning, it'll be full. No questions asked. I'm not going to have to go anywhere. I'm not going to have to think about it. Just plug it in like you would your phone and it'll charge up for how much does it cost?

12:55Like eight bucks or so, seven or eight bucks. If that actually, it might be a little bit less. Very, very cheap to get full charge and I don't have to think about it. And that's another one of those, you know, sort of little things that about having a home that lifestyle wise is so, so worth it and such, such a mental load off of, off of driving an EV. Another thing is we did get gutters installed. I know for many of you, that might be kind of surprising that the new home, new built home didn't come with gutters. That seems to be the complete norm around here, which is hilarious because we live in Florida, which is one of the rainiest states in the United States.

13:30That it just makes no sense to me, but didn't come with the home. So got gutters installed. Last thing I could, I could go about this for, for hours, which I, it sounds silly to probably 95 % of you, but 5 % of you will find it very, very interesting. I won't go about it forever, but a home assistant. Home Assistant is basically like a home local server that can control and communicate with a bunch of stuff and run automations and scenes or whatever and control stuff, you know, with voice assistance and from your phone. That's as far as I'll go into it. But especially if you own a home because you'll have access to more things that you can do to the home that can integrate with it.

14:04Just look into it. Please just look up Home Assistant. Consider getting Home Assistant and tweaking and setting it up. And if you're a nerd, especially if you just enjoy, you know, tweaking with things, doing a little bit of light coating, but not heavy coating by any means, and just tweaking with electronics and automations and home stuff, it's an absolute blast. Please just Google it. Just look it up. The last thing I want to mention that we've done that I think is essential, but I just don't think nearly enough people do it or worry about it, is a warranty inspection. We did get our home fully inspected prior to purchasing to ensure that nothing major was wrong.

14:38they found quite a lot of little things little things that probably wouldn't have had any long term effect but were still important to take care of and the the builder did a fantastic job the builders dr horton everybody hears nightmare stories about every single mass builder i could have they could have said the name of any mass builder and people would have a negative reaction but the dr horton was the builder and they were very responsive to fixing all of those little issues that were found immediately sent people out and dealt with it and then now with the warranty inspection we got the the 11 month warranty inspection prior to the one year warranty on the home running out and again the inspector found just little things here there a couple little seals that could have been um could be fixed a little bit of cracking on the on the um stucco just did a little bit did a little bit of uh patching on there and painting over little things like that that some of it's even home maintenance related um but they did a good job of sending people out to show us how to maintain it how to take care of it and again responded to it very very quickly and immediately send out contractors to to get it all fixed so that's been a very good experience and it's always a very very good peace of mind to get those inspections completed and know that there's nothing major that you just don't know is happening like the roof for example you never go up on the roof realistically the vast majority of people don't and they don't know what's going on up there and they don't know if something's wrong having a home inspection completed like that can be a godsend to make sure that nothing up there that you're not seeing needs to be corrected.

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18:53So that's what I'm going to be covering now. So the financial progress since then will be covering some things that were less expensive than expected, things that were kind of as expected, which is always good to see. And some things, we haven't had anything that's been necessarily more expensive than expected, but we've had things that have been less certain than expected, kind of less standardized or nailed down than we thought ahead of time. And there's also going to be one big unknown in there that I'll cover that's kind of been something that I've been thinking about a lot and focusing on a lot.

19:21So first to start from the beginning of the process, the purchasing process. Everything financially in the purchasing process, while it is probably the scariest part of the process, it actually went just as expected. Everything went just about as planned. Of course, numbers here and there are going to shift slightly and there will be, you know, deals for certain things or there'll be shifts for certain things or, you know, things that you may not have known were going to happen along the way. It's a very complex process with a ton of moving parts. But the kind of net result from everything was kind of on par or on par for what we expected.

19:58Thankfully, that process was greatly eased by having such a good team of the mortgage company, the lender company. The team that we were working with there was very, very good. the sales associate that was actually selling the home. They also did a fantastic job of teaching us along the way. I mentioned in the previous home ownership episode that the agent that we worked with did not quite pan out how we wanted it to pan out. Long story short, the agent was not a single party agent. They were basically an agent representing the sale. They were just there to try and facilitate the sale. And the issue with that is they weren't there to just solely represent us.

20:37They weren't there to just help us and educate us through the process and get us the best deal. That wasn't the real end goal of what they were there for. And that was a shock to us. And that just wasn't something we knew ahead of time. And we actually only found out because of help for part of the mortgage team that was working with us. They educated us on it and what that meant. And that was not only very important to learn and very helpful to learn, but also kind of amazing that that was the person that taught us that. because it doesn't benefit them to teach us that. They were just trying to help us through that process.

21:11And the whole team was like that. The whole team would educate us on things, even if it was, you know, so to speak, to their detriment or it didn't help them directly, they would still educate us and be helpful to us in that process. And the process definitely would not have gone as expected or gone as smoothly if it was all just up to our own research ahead of time. There are a ton of moving parts and complexities in the process, us so many forms to sign, so many numbers to calculate and track that without their help, it would not have gone that easily. And there's just a ton of legalese and terms in there that that are hard to to can be hard to define and also apply to specific situations, if that makes sense.

21:49And the team did a fantastic job helping us with that and made it really a relatively easy process. Again, very complicated, but not necessarily difficult to work through. So that was really, really fantastic. And again, most of the numbers worked out as expected. And most of the kind of predictions we were getting ahead of time for what it would all cost and what would be going where worked out more or less as expected. Since then, ownership kind of discussing the finances of ownership piece by piece here. One is, of course, mortgage payments are nice and locked in. And that is a big upside. I do think that that upside can be overweighted.

22:24Sometimes when people talk about the pros and cons of purchasing a home versus renting something. people talk about well if you own a home your mortgage is locked in and so your payments are locked in and finances are so much easier while that's not a lie necessarily your mortgage payments are only a portion of what your overall house expenses home ownership expenses are for us it's what it's probably about 55 to 65 just doing like mental math 55 to 65 percent of our overall home expenses and basically all the other expenses on top of that can vary. They can vary by season. If we're talking about utilities, they can vary by year to talking about taxes or talking about home insurance that can fluctuate.

23:07Everything else on top of that can fluctuate. It's only that 55 to 65 % for us that's actually stable and fixed. And again, while that is fantastic, it's nice and locked in. It's not the whole story. And so that I would only weigh that partially. Another thing about ownership is that for us, since we purchased a new built home, what that means is that prior to the home being built, it was quote unquote, unimproved land. It was an unimproved lot because there was nothing built on it. And so the taxes are very, very low for just a plain lot that's empty that has nothing built on it. The second something is built on it, the value of that property goes significantly up.

23:42And so the taxes will jump on it as well. What this meant for us is since we purchased the home in August, taxes basically aren't reassessed until the following January. And so that actually gave us four months worth of low unimproved taxes. And this was kind of just a good financial bump and help for us up front and something we wouldn't have gotten if we'd, if we'd purchased a lived in home. And this basically meant that we could, we, to keep ourselves honest, we still paid the same expected payments throughout those four months. But what it meant is then at the beginning of the year, we get a refund check for everything additional that we put in escrow that was over the top.

24:19And we just got a refund directly from, from our mortgage lender. And that was kind of just almost like a tax refund sort of for us. And we knew that we could have paid less and not have gotten a refund or got less of a refund. But again, to try and get our finances, our regular monthly finances in that, in that pace of, Hey, this is how much things are going to cost going forward, making sure our budget is set up properly. And we're not bleeding money for some reason, because we missed, you know, missed a variable somewhere. We wanted to make sure we had everything as nailed down as we could.

24:48So we still paid it and got that refund. Next thing is as a new homeowner, thankfully, no major maintenance is needed or predicted anytime soon. Of course, anything can happen. And over the long run, things will need to be done. That's a fact. It being a new home doesn't mean that it's indefinitely immune to that. But what it does mean is that if we had purchased a lived in home, we could have moved in and known that within a year or two, we're going to have to save up X amount of money to, you know, replace the roof or replace the HVAC or replace the windows with double pane windows or something.

25:18There's these big, big expenses that can pop up if you purchase a lived in home. And I'm not I'm not, you know, pooh poohing on on purchasing a lived in home or anything like that. But it's a big upside to purchase a new home and just not have to worry about those major, major expenses popping up out of nowhere. The first thing here that was actually cheaper than expected for us in homeownership was home insurance. This was something that I've heard a lot of nightmares about, especially in Florida with all the hurricanes, large hurricanes in the previous years, that home insurance rates have jumped significantly.

25:50And that was one thing that scared us definitely ahead of time. And that's something you won't get a solid quote on until you're actually kind of in the buying process. But thankfully, insurance was actually cheaper, a lot cheaper than expected. I mean, our insurance is close to a third the cost of many of my coworkers. workers and this isn't because the home is smaller or anything like that or or i mean it's less valuable than many of their their homes for sure but it it's just the fact that it's a new home it has all of the it's built to all of the up-to-date codes to handle wind resistance to have wind resistance to handle hurricane force winds to handle rain it's it's to handle um to handle the thermal cycles of the weather in florida and the humidity of florida it's up to code to everything And that makes it much, much cheaper for home insurance because the insurance company is predicting that you're going to have less happen that you need to use insurance for.